The Dow Chemical Company is employing key elements of Delcam’s Power Solution family of software products to speed creation of both production and prototype moulds at its Materials Engineering Center in Midland, Michigan, USA.

Delcam Thailand held a successful two-day event promoting On-Machine Verification (OMV) to local Bangkok manufacturers on 7th and 8th March. The event was hosted by machine-tool supplier Mazak in its Bangkok showroom and supported by metrology specialists Renishaw which supplied probing equipment for the live demonstrations.

Representatives from many of Bangkok’s largest manufacturing companies attended on each day. Each morning included presentations on Mazak’s machine tools, Renishaw’s probing systems and Delcam’s PowerINSPECT inspection software. The afternoons were run in a workshop format, with delegates provided initial training in the use of OMV with Renishaw probes on Mazak machines.

The delegates were clearly impressed with the event, with five of the companies already committing to investments in the Delcam software and Renishaw probing systems. In addition, one of the Delcam customers that attended has placed an order for a Mazak turning centre.

OMV with Delcam’s PowerINSPECT allows initial checking of machined parts to be carried out in situ on any CNC machine tool rather than having to transfer them to coordinate measuring machines for inspection. The main advantage is that any mistakes are discovered where they can be corrected – on the machine tool. Repeated cycles of machining and inspection, interspersed with long set-up times on the respective pieces of equipment, are avoided, meaning that overall manufacturing times can be reduced.

The most obvious benefit of OMV is for those companies that do not have existing inspection capabilities. Modern machine tools, such as those supplied by Mazak, either come with, or can be retrofitted with, probing systems from Renishaw to assist in the set-up of the job. With PowerINSPECT, this same equipment can be used for verification at little extra cost.

OMV can give huge time savings by enabling the quality of the component being machined to be monitored at all stages in the manufacturing process. This allows any errors to be detected earlier, and so corrected more quickly and at lower cost. For example, it is possible to check that the correct amount of stock has been left on the component after a roughing operation, rather than having to wait until all machining operations have been completed before discovering that an error has been made.

Similarly, the extent of any damage caused, for example, by a tool breakage, can be assessed accurately and a decision made immediately to determine whether the part can still be completed within tolerance or whether it will have to be scrapped.